Couple of things: 1. While performing the suggested operations, got errors with make and make install 2. When I check the system with the commands that you had advised in your previous post, I notice that the results have changed. Here are the outputs, starting with 'make' :

Though just 3 days into the Linux world, thanks to the problem, I have learnt many new things. Hopefully, we arrive at a solution - there are a number of users who are facing this exact problem - we all will be able to enjoy the wireless - again!

Everywhere I look online seems to suggest that compiling this driver will cause kernel panics when used

So I'm wondering if we'd be better off removing the blacklist entries we added, then try a later kernel, possibly 3.9 (and possibly later firmware too).(I've also read that though it *should* be possible to get rt2800pci to work as the driver, there then seems to be a weak signal/connection drops issue everyone is having)

Another option would be to go back to the 3.2 kernel, and compile the drivers from Ralink .. this option is supposed to work well.

I think trying out with 3.2 should be fine as long as: 1. it doesn't disturb the files and other programs that are currently installed, 2. upgrading to 3.x ( x>8 ) at a future date doesn't disturb files and other programs installed at that point of time [being a newbie, I am not actually aware of the repercussions]

If you think there might be issues involved working with 3.2, I think the next best option for the time being is to use and external USB adapter, and wait till such a time when 3290 can be made to work with either 3.8 or higher kernel version.

Please advise. Once again, thank you very much for helping me out on this one!